A Force for Positivity & Ways to Help: July Edition

LOCATION: SAN FRANCISCO, CALIFORNIA • July 24th, 2020

How are you doing? What is something that made you smile this week? I’m sharing a new post of things that inspired me, made me laugh, and brought me joy these past few weeks. In case you missed past month’s Positivity & Ways to Help posts, you can find them here, here, and here. Feel free to add yours to the comments!

CAUSES THAT ARE MAKING AN IMPACT

Donate Plasma or Blood - If you have fully recovered from COVID-19, please consider donating plasma! Convalescent plasma is currently being investigated for the treatment of COVID-19 and there is evidence that it might help individuals who are currently recovering. The American Red Cross and many hospitals are also offering free COVID-19 antibody testing to all donors due to the current blood donation shortages. The FDA has more information and resources listed here and you can also check with your local hospital.

Broadway Cares - We have been playing the cast album of Hamilton non-stop since the show’s release on Disney+ and we just watched it again last night too! Music theater has been on our minds a lot as a result so I wanted to highlight Broadway Cares’ COVID-19 Emergency Assistance Fund in support of those in the theatre community who are facing healthcare crises and other needs while Broadway remained closed due to the pandemic. 

As the pandemic continues and schools are likely to remain closed for the fall, No Kid Hungry continues to provide free meals to children who are at risk of going hungry and have previously relied on school meals. They have also launched a texting hotline to let parents know about emergency food distribution sites within their neighborhoods.

FOR SOME JOY & INSPIRATION

Virtual Bouquet to Art 2020 - The de Young museum in San Francisco is currently hosting their annual Bouquet to Art event online now through Sunday, July 26th. The museum hosted their first Bouquet to Art event in 1984 and has become so popular that many museums have their own show too. This was one of my favorite events at the de Young last year and it even inspired us to become members of the Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco. I will definitely be tuning into their Sunday event as they host a bouquet-building workshop! Their daily floral programming is also recorded and available if you missed the live stream.

The cover image of Viola Davis for Vanity Fair’s July/August issue was shot by Dario Calmese. He is the first black photographer to shoot a cover photo for the 106-year-old magazine. Vanity Fair publishes about 12 issues per year and has run since 1913. Long overdue? Yes, but the progress is newsworthy nonetheless. Davis will portray Michelle Obama in Showtime’s upcoming series First Ladies, you can read the full interview here. Dario Calmese’s interview on making history as VF and how his cover image is meant to be a protest with the Times here.

Speaking of Hamilton, I recently discovered this series of videos, How Hamilton Works, analyzing the music behind the hit show. The creator breaks down the chord progressions of various characters and discusses how rap, hip-hop, and theatre influenced Lin-Manuel Miranda to write Hamilton. I love how he explains the music theory in a really simple way and even shows you the chords on a keyboard as you follow along.

*Photos from Bouquet to Art 2019

Force for Positivity & Ways to Help: Black Lives Matter

LOCATION: PALO ALTO, CALIFORNIA • June 19th, 2020

In light of everything that has happened in the last two week, in our country and around the world, I put my content on hold in order to spend more time listening, reading, and engaging in conversation with friends and family about the racial injustices that are taking place. I’ve been dedicating one post a month to sharing causes that are worth donating time or resources to and also share things that I’ve been encouraged by. Due to current events, I’ve moved this post forward and dedicated it to the Black Lives Matter movement.

There are so many great organizations and I am highlighting the ones we have personally supported or are planning to support in the coming months. I encourage you to seek out local organizations or ones that aren’t garnering as much media attention. Minneapolis Freedom Fund raised $20 million in days thanks to high profile celebrities like Janelle Monae and Steve Carell, but there are many more organizations in everyone’s backyard that also need support.

CAUSES THAT ARE MAKING AN IMPACT

So Oakland started a GoFundMe page to help rebuild and clean up black-owned businesses that have been looted, vandalized, and affected by the recent riots in Oakland, CA. 

Based in Minnesota, Black Visions Collective is a black liberation and advocacy group that also intersects with Trans and LGBTQ+ rights. They have been pushing to defund the Minneapolis Police Department in recent years and this week the Minneapolis City Council announced their intent to do so.

Started by civil rights lawyer Bryan Stevenson, Equal Justice Initiative challenges convictions and advocates for criminal-justice reform and racial justice based in Montgomery, Alabama. Stevenson wrote a memoir Just Mercy, which is now a feature film (see below).

You might have seen #8CANTWAIT on social media this week which is Campaign Zero’s initiative for calling cities to implement police reform policies that will end police violence. You can go onto their website and see if any of the eight policies are in place in your city.

As the oldest and largest civil liberties organization, the ACLU has been defending individual rights and liberties since 1920. They turned 100 years old back and January and Helen Keller was a founding member!

UPLIFTING NEWS

Watch Former President Barack Obama’s “Dear Class of 2020” message to students. I especially loved the part where he says “even if it all seems broken, have faith in our democracy” and called us all to action - to participate and vote!

Just Mercy (2019 Film) - Warner Bros. has made the film available to stream and free this month to help educate viewers on systemic racism. This film stars Michael B. Jordan as civil rights defense attorney Bryan Stevenson and is based on a true story. I haven’t seen the movie yet, but it’s on my queue for the next few weeks.

Michael Che gave me a much needed laugh this week while also presenting the importance of Black Lives Matter in a humorous way. I’m planning on watching the full comedy special Michael Che Matters on Netflix this weekend.

To amplify melanated voices using their platforms, some of my favorite bloggers have shared their favorite fashion, art, and home brands owned by black women here, here, and here. 

Everyone has a voice and the ability to create change. I hope you go out and continue to have conversations with your friends, your family, your colleagues in the days, weeks, months, years to come. “Learning to stand in somebody else’s shoes, to see through their eyes, that’s how peace begins. And it’s up to you to make that happen. Empathy is a quality of character that can change the world.” ~ Barack Obama

XO,
Tiffany

Continuing the Force for Positivity & More Ways to Help

LOCATION: PALO ALTO, CALIFORNIA • May 15th, 2020

Last month I was excited to share a highlight of things that caught my eye. You can read the April Edition here. I am following up with another post of things that inspired me, made me laugh, and brought me joy. Feel free to add your to the comments!

CAUSES THAT ARE MAKING AN IMPACT

SF New Deal is helping San Francisco restaurants keep their doors open by connecting them to local residents in need of meals. The non-profit purchases daily meals from restaurants at volume and in advance and then distributes the food to street clinics, public housing sites, churches, and homes including Tenderloin Housing Clinic, SF African American Faith-Based Coalition and Chinatown Community Development Center, and more. This week alone, volunteers delivered over 19,105 meals to 60 sites around San Francisco. 

I love that my favorite clothing brand, Reformation, has been making masks since the pandemic began. Reformation was the first place we were able to buy masks from and they use the same sustainable fabric they make their clothing from for their masks. They have already made over 250K masks and for their first donations, they worked with LA homeless shelters to distribute masks to high-risk populations and also donated masks to UCLA Health’s medical staff. You can buy a pack of 5 for yourself or donate to those in need.

Parata Systems has launched the Pharmacy Employee Relief Fund to support employees of retail, long-term care, hospital pharmacies impacted by COVID-19. With an initial commitment of $100,000, their aim is to provide assistance to pharmacists, technicians, and pharmacy employees who are facing financial hardship due to illness, quarantine, or closures as a result of COVID-19. Comprehensive Pharmacy Services (CPS) has also made a $100,000 donation to the fund. 

Concern Worldwide is responding to COVID-19 emergency across 23 of the most vulnerable countries by distributing PPE, setting up handwashing stations, delivering prevention messages and ensuring children don’t fall into malnutrition while their education initiatives have been suspended during extended lockdown. You can support their COVID response and read more about their activities from their countries of operations here.

Feed the Fight is an organization I highlighted last month for working to save local restaurants who have been affected by shelter-in-place orders while supporting healthcare workers at UNC Hospital in Chapel Hill, NC. They have recently announced that they have become an official chapter of Frontline Foods, so I wanted to update you guys too. I grew up eating at these restaurants and received much of pharmacy training at UNC, so this organization is quite dear to my heart!

FOR A GOOD LAUGH & SOME JOY

The original cast of ‘Legally Blonde The Musical’ reunited for a Public Health PSA to sanitize! This musical was a college favorite of mine. My roommates and I even went to NYC during spring break to catch it on Broadway. Excuse me while I go put the album on, D is about to find out that I still know ALL THE WORDS!

Krystal Bick’s isolation self-portraits are so beautiful and inspiring! She puts so much energy and heart into each portrait and I also love seeing her share behind-the-camera looks on her instagram. If I had to pick favorites, it would be here, here, and here. She is one of the people who has inspired me the most to channel my creative energy during the quarantine. Proof that you don’t have to leave your apartment to be creative! #isolationcreation 

Dr. Craig Smith, the chair of the department of surgery at Columbia University, has been writing daily correspondence to his colleagues detailing how the health system is handling pandemic response and challenges faced. In one update, he features lines from the T.S. Elliot poem “The Waste Land,” and in another he urges his staff to enroll in a study tracking COVID-19 antibodies in healthcare workers. These letters have become a source of inspiration and poetry as well as information, leading to The Wall Street Journal declaring that Smith was “the pandemic’s most powerful writer.”

Star Wars Day was last week and if you are also a fan of Calvin & Hobbes, then you’ll love Brian Kesinger’s Lil’ Kylo art series! He works for Disney and is one of my favorite artists on Instagram. I love seeing the art people commission from him including this Star Wars/Harry Potter mashup.

Banana pudding fans rejoice! Magnolia Bakery in New York City has released their recipe! I have been making banana pudding for our dear friends’ pig pickin’ for years and I can’t wait to do a side by side comparison!

How to Design a Gorgeous Gallery Wall (with your TV included)

LOCATION: PALO ALTO, CALIFORNIA • MAY 1st, 2020

Outfit Details: Sezane Top, J.Crew Pants, Ferragamo Heels, Miansai Cuff Bracelet

When we moved into our apartment in Palo Alto, I knew immediately that I wanted to create a grand gallery wall as a focal point in our new home. Since our entryway, living room, and dining room are all one continuous space, it was important to me to create some resemblance of sections using our furniture. It’s no secret that Danny and I are huge Marvel and Star Wars fans (hello Disney +) so we spend quite a bit of time watching movies together. Since the TV takes up a lot of space in our tiny living room, rather than try and hide it, I wanted to incorporate it into the décor!

There are no hard rules when it comes to building the perfect wall. It simply takes time to collect things you love and a little bit of massaging to get all of the pieces to fit together. There are a lot of art services out there that offer “pre-curated” gallery walls, but I find that I usually don’t love every piece. A personal rule of mine was that I had to love each art piece for the piece itself, beyond how it fit into the gallery wall. I wanted it all to be something I will carry from home to home.

Art, left to right: Guide to New York, Days in Paris, Otto - Woodblock Print,
Fig Print, Press for Champagne (silent version here), New York Door Drawing, Close Print

Creating the Gallery Wall in PowerPoint

This is the step-by-step guide of how I created my gallery wall from start to finish and the following will contain some screenshots where I show you my process.  I found using PowerPoint for PC was the easiest way to visualize how the pieces will look once they are hung together.

1. Starting with a blank page, mock up your space using a 1:1 (inches to feet) conversion. Make sure to get the page size right with how high your ceiling is. Our ladder shelves are Crate & Barrel and the TV console is Ikea so I copy + pasted similar items to the slide. Remember to include anything you can’t move (grrrr thermostat).

2. Finding Art – Save anything that catches your eye and speaks to you either aesthetically and sentimentally; copy + paste them to your next blank slide. Don’t worry about whether it matches or not right now. Think of places you have traveled to and loved or art that speaks to a hobby. Remember to include art you might already have in your home (find the picture online or upload a photo from your phone).

a. Inspiration: I used artists that I love as inspiration like Rodin, Degas, and Ellsworth Kelly and then found pieces that invoked feelings of their work.

b. Mixed Media: I also challenge you to include items that are not framed art  – like this wool & tassel wall hanging or these hanging baskets. You can also use a canvas piece or something with an ornate frame.

c. Online Sources: Some of my favorite absolute places to find art include Minted, One Kings Lane, Anthropologie Home, and McGee & Co.

3. Selecting Your Art - Start rearranging your art onto the first slide of your mock up. Having pieces you already love and know you want is the easiest starting point since it gives you something to build off of. New York City holds a special place in both of our hearts so when I saw this “My Guide To New York” map, I knew instantly it would become my anchor piece. Consider the following as you play around with the configuration. Remember to “overlap” your art with your TV since you want it to feel like it is apart of the collage!

a. Cohesive Pallet – I chose to go with black, white, and neutrals with a pop of gold. It’s ideal to have an array of different shades of the colors you choose so things don’t look too matchy-matchy.

b. Different Orientations and non-traditional art pieces – the key to having a successful gallery wall is having a mixture of shapes and textures. This is why I think it’s important to have a piece of non-framed art. It elevates your gallery wall and really gives it that pop. I choose to go with this “Press for Champagne” piece and yes, the bell really does ring!!!

c. Different colored frames – three of the pieces I had picked out were pre-framed so I had to choose what colors I wanted for the rest.  Originally, I really wanted the “Guide to New York” framed in black, but it didn’t fit well here since that TV is black so the color ends up dominating the space. Companies like Minted offer framing and mounting options to pair with your art so you don’t have to go to the frame store yourself. Remember to include frame size estimates into your PowerPoint.

4. Putting together your wall – As the saying goes “measure twice, cut once.” This is absolutely true for hanging art! Cut brown paper (or wrapping paper) out into the shapes of your frames and hang those first so you can mark where the nails will go. I can’t stress this enough. Luckily you don’t have to play with the layout since you already did that in PowerPoint!

5. Other thoughts – As you can see in my original selection of art, I had a lot of pink and feminine art pieces. Since this was a shared space of D and mine, it was important to me that the gallery wall reflected us, so I shifted away from those pieces. That’s not to say that I won’t purchase them for my home office or put them somewhere else.

I hope you found this post helpful and inspirational. Feel free to leave your questions and comments below!

XO,
Tiffany

33 THINGS I’VE LEARNED AT 33

LOCATION: PALO ALTO, CALIFORNIA • APRIL 24th, 2020

Outfit Details: BHLDN Dress, Miansai Cuff Bracelet

I love being in my thirties! In high school, I once lamented to my best friend that I couldn’t wait until we were old enough to have coffee table books and now I have arrived! So in honor of turning 33 this week, I’ve put together a list of things I’ve learned over the years. Some of these things have come naturally to me, while others I struggle with and am still working on a daily basis. Here they are, in no particular order:

33. The only predictable thing about life is that life is unpredictable. Like none of us expected this pandemic (ok, maybe except Bill Gates). 

32. You can’t always change the world, but you can change how you view it.

31. Embrace your current season of life.

30. Your biggest critic is yourself. Learn to ignore your inner critic when you know it’s wrong and learn self talk. Self talk can help pull yourself out of a spiral of negative thoughts.

29. Just start. Stop waiting for permission from yourself or other people. This is one that I often struggle with and I’m still working on.

28. Get enough sleep. If you think everyone hates you or you hate everyone, you probably need sleep (or food).

27. Stop apologizing for not being into things everyone else likes: sweatpants, Game of Thrones, beer.

26. Life’s too short to wear clothes you hate. It’s time to donate or consign those pieces you bought, but have never worn. They sit in the back of our closets and haunt us. I know we all have them.

25. Be the bigger woman. Be the first to reach out if you think you’ve hurt someone one, either to try to clarify misunderstandings or to apologize. Also give other people a chance to apologize and learn from it. The best apology is changed behavior.

24. Saying “no'' to some things allows you to say “yes” to others. I used to say “yes” to everything because I had a fear of missing out. Now I’ve started saying “yes” only to the events and projects I really want to do. This also helps with preventing social burnout.

23. Being a feminist is believing in the right to have a choice. A woman who chooses to stay-at-home with her kids and a woman who chooses to have a full time job are both exercising feminism. Let’s stop judging each other for the choices people make. We are called to do different things and find fulfillment in different ways.

22. Learn a good skincare routine. Y’all I used St. Ives facial scrub all the way through graduate school. It’s basically taking sandpaper to your face! We’ve all made bad skincare mistakes. With the right products, I was able to fix the redness, the dry patches, and the hormonal acne. 

21. Build a relationship with your local pharmacist and ideally stick to one pharmacy (chain). It’s important to have the history of all the medications you are taking or have taken be in one place. We are always on the lookout for potential drug interactions between what you are taking and we see you more often than your doctor does. 

20. Social Media is a tool meant to enhance your life. Periodically reevaluate its role in your life. Learn to use the unfollow button. There is a reason it exists. 

19. Single people have single people problems, married people have married people problems. Don’t compare problems, listen more.

18. Wear sunscreen, protect your skin.

17. Find a good taylor you trust. A few well-placed stitches can change the entire look and feel of an outfit.

16. Learn to save money. Set a budget or financial goals and reward yourself when you hit milestones.

15. Comparison really is the theft of joy.

14. Teach people how to treat you. This is a huge one I learned from my mother. She used to remind my brothers and I that people don’t have the innate sense of how you want to be treated, you have to teach them. People often step on your toes simply because they didn’t know it was something that bothered you. This is also a great way to judge other people’s character - do they listen when you ask how you want to be treated? If not, it’s time to move on from them.

13. Family first, but only if they act like it. Families are supposed to love you unconditionally and want what’s best for you.They are not entitled to you simply because you share DNA. 

12. Hold your head high even when people are trying to tear you down. Don’t stoop to their level. Some people just don’t want to see you succeed. Learn to trust in your own self-worth!

11. Diversify your reading habits. Educate yourself to both sides of an issue so you can engage in thoughtful conversations. Read books. 

10. Find an exercise routine you enjoy and stick with it. It doesn’t have to be running or yoga. I discovered The Bar Method when I moved to California and it was life changing! Their live stream is keeping me sane during this quarantine!

9. Be with someone who pushes you to be the best version of yourself and you do the same for them. The best relationships are where both people think they got the better end of the deal. 

8. Learn your love languages and those of your partner. This will help you articulate how you want to be loved and learn how they want to be loved.

7. Quality over quantity. This goes for friends, shoes, and alcohol.

6. Invest in true friendships, people that have your back and you lift each other up. It’s ok to grow out of friendships too. Don’t forget to reach out to the ones who are in a different stage of life than you are. I’m often guilty of this when I think my friends with children are too busy and probably don’t have time for me. I promise they will love to hear from you.

5. Take care of your health before you have to and listen to your body. I now eat relatively diary-free and no longer have stomach pains/reactions/inflammation. Make your annual health appointments and commit to them!

4. The best way to eat healthy is to learn to cook. Read food labels - you’ll be shocked to find how much sugar and sodium is packed in processed food! Learn the basics, have 5 dishes that you can make over and over again with confidence! You don’t need expensive or fancy equipment, but I highly recommend an Instant-pot!

3. Nourish your inner child! Life is meant to be enjoyed - have a spontaneous picnic in an open field or jump on your bed in a dress. This time spent in quarantine has really shown me the importance of creating your own fun.

2. Pray or meditate. This will help you find inner peace and give you time to self-reflect. 

1. We are all more interconnected than we realize. This pandemic has taught us anything, it’s how much we depend on each other.

An extra for good luck: Live generously. Everyone has been blessed with different gifts; find ways to positively impact other people whether it’s with your time, your wealth, or your talents. My mother was a big believer in using the good china whenever we had guests. It didn’t matter if we had one guest or twenty. She always asks that people not try to repay her, but to pay it forward. 

XO,
Tiffany